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By Justin Huggler, Berlin Hessy Taft’s baby photograph was selected by Nazi party as the ideal Aryan infant, but Joseph Goebbels’ propaganda machine never discovered that she was in fact Jewish Hessy Taft recently presented the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial…

By Suzanne Fields When Ariel Sharon died on Saturday, the obituaries emphasized his strength as a military commander and political leader, recalling his brilliant counterattack across Suez to surround the Egyptian armies when Israel’s very existence hung in the balance…

How our body’s reaction to hearing the shofar’s blast primes us for real change. by Yvette Alt Miller Each day of Rosh Hashanah, our synagogue services are punctuated by a hundred calls from the shofar, a ram’s horn that reverberates…

by Yair Danielsohn (Photo-Aish Torah) What lies behind this enigmatic festival? And why the bonfires? In Israel, months before the advent of the festival of Lag B’Omer — the 33rd day of the Omer, the 49 days that bridge between…

by Rabbi Efrem Goldberg Tony Robbin’s secret to happiness and achieving success. Years ago, someone gave me a Tony Robbins cd to listen to. I was excited to hear what one of the most inspirational people of modern times would…

by Osher Chaim Levene, with Rabbi Yehoshua Hartman Excerpted from the just-published book Jewish Wisdom in the Numbers. The number 50 is the distinguished number of transcendence. The count up to 50 is composed of two essential and distinct stages.…

It is now a quiet moment late at night. After an exhausting day of Passover cleaning, you have sunk into the sweetest of sleeps, and I am sitting here with a pile of haggadas, preparing for Seder night. Somehow the words never come out the way I want them to, and the Seder evening is always unpredictable. But so many thoughts and feelings are welling up in my mind and I want to share them with you. These are the words I mean to say at the Seder.

When you will see me at the Seder dressed in a kittel, the same plain white garment worn on Yom Kippur, your first question will be, “Why are you dressed like this?”

Because it is Yom Kippur, a day of reckoning. You see, each one of us has a double role. First and foremost we are human beings, creatures in the image of God, and on Yom Kippur we are examined if indeed we are worthy of that title. But we are also components of Klal Yisrael, the Jewish People, links in a chain that started over 3,000 years ago and will make it to the finish line of the end of times. It is a relay race where a torch is passed on through all the ages, and it is our charge, to take it from the one before and pass it on to the one after. Tonight we are being judged as to how well we have received our tradition and how well we are passing it on.

“It is now 3,300 years since we received that freedom in Egypt. If we imagine the average age of having a child to be about 25 years of age, there are four generations each century. That means there is a total of 132 people stretching from our forefathers in Egypt to us today. 132 people had to pass on this heritage flawlessly, with a devotion and single-mindedness that could not falter. Who were these 133 fathers of mine?

“Hackers Anonymous” vows to “erase Israel from the Internet” in coordinated attack.
Arutz Sheva staffA group of international hackers, dubbed “Hackers Anonymous,” has vowed to “erase Israel from the Internet” in a coordinated attack against the Jewish state scheduled to take place on April 7.

The campaign, titled #OpIsrael, was initiated and announced by a hacker who goes by the name of Anon Ghost, the Arabian Gazette reported Wednesday.

It is being supported by a number of other known hacktivists who have gained notoriety for carrying out similar state-targeted attacks.

God took the Jewish people out of Egypt in the springtime. The Talmud notes that God was very thoughtful. Not only was He interested in redeeming the nation, He wanted to do so at a time when the weather was just right. Not too hot, not too cold.

Everything about the Passover season is beautiful. The whole idea of re-doing your house — your environment — for the holiday should be a beautiful experience. For some reason, though, the burden of all that cleaning often hangs heavy over us, and as a result we lose much of the joy of Passover.

I’d like to not only make Passover cleaning a little easier, but above all to change the attitude once and for all to stop being frightened. Passover is not a monster. It’s the most beautiful time of the year.